


Bleak Oneshots

by Acciofirewhiskey



Series: Bleak: Sherlock Holmes AU [2]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV), Sherlock Holmes (Downey films)
Genre: F/M, Sherlock Holmes AU, Smut, Victorian, just a lot of smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-04
Updated: 2014-12-04
Packaged: 2018-02-28 02:46:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2716043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acciofirewhiskey/pseuds/Acciofirewhiskey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Smutty) Oneshots related to Bleak, Rumbelle Sherlock Holmes AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prequel: Only Logical

**Author's Note:**

> Thief Belle French finds herself handcuffed to a library bookshelf. Who should come to her rescue but Detective Eleazar Gold himself. Unfortunately, he finds he likes her bound a little too much.

Belle French is cursing the fact that she never learned to pick locks—despite the ample opportunities afforded her at 221B Spinner Street.

The bastard had even gone so far as to offer once.

She curses under her breath as her final hairpin snaps in two and her right hand remains chained to the surprisingly sturdy bookshelf. “Dammnit,” she heaves, slumping back against the dusty tomes.

“Stuck, are we?”

Belle gasps, as her eyes fix upon—and really, it should be no surprise at all—Detective Eleazar Gold, himself. She rolls her blue eyes, “I should have known he’d send you.”

“Yes, the dear, distractible Inspector Humbert was still under the impression you worked for me.”

 “Oh, was he?” She giggles in that flirtatious way she knows men like (and her detective loves), “What can I say? I have that effect on men, always driving them to distraction.”

“I meant  _me_ ,” he sneers, striding up. He points a finger at her, “I did you a favor, figuring out your plight straight away and pointing the inspector in the wrong direction. You are extraordinarily lucky, m’dear. The inspector tells me he rather thought you the thief, before he fell for your little tale. Fell asleep in the library, was it?”

She shrugs—as much as the single, cuffed right hand allowed, “I  _do_  love books.”

“Yes, and the bumbling idiot remembered that from days past. Though,” he begins, and he’s crossed the expanse of the room, to stand a handful of steps from her; Belle denies the fact that her breath quickens at the proximity, “you must admit you’re dressed a bit too alluringly for the bookish maid-cum-fiancéd wife-to-be routine to fool a more practiced eye as mine.”

He surveys her, looking up and down the length of her, lingering at last on her eyes, but after a moment he turns abruptly on his heel and paces—to ease his train of thought he’s begun down, as Belle well-knows, “On my way to collect the dear doctor from the devil disguised as a deck of fifty-two—“

Belle makes a regretful sound (though she’s not surprised to hear that Dr. Whale has returned to his less savory habits), “Fell off the wagon again?”

“Though unfamiliar with what I can only assume to be an American colloquialism, I take your meaning, and yes, though I highly doubt he was ever much on the  _wagon_ , was it, to begin with.” Gold clears his throat, “but I digress, I met the Inspector along the road, surprisingly enough, looking for all the world as if he’d seen a carnival wolf got loose.”

Gold raises an eyebrow as he pivots, his rumpled coat flapping behind, “Though wanting the exact reverse, to be sure, I approached him, asking if to my great hopes that Judgment Day was at hand.

“To my great disappointment, he replied to the contrary, that he had just come from the nearby jewelry shop—did I know the one? Beside the book lend and loan?—yes, yes, I told him, I knew it, he continued on with his summation of that evening’s events, detailing, the neighbor’s call of distress, the thief’s entrance and exit through the next door library dumbwaiter, the finding of my little mousy housekeeper, the subsequent hubbub outside, how he locked you away in the shop for your own safety against thieves loose in the night, and being the benevolent employer that I am, I offered my assistance to release you.” He pulls the key from his vest pocket with a flourish.

“How generous of you,” she says, frowning at the infuriating man. On anyone else, his wordy pretentions would disgust her (remind her of all those who treated her like dirt both stateside and all across Europe before she’d crawled through their muck to make something of herself), but with Gold, she couldn’t help it: she loved to listen to him speak. She could spend ages listening to that sound, any tone, any temperament. He was her undoing.

This time, quite literally.

“Yes, I like to see my tax dollars at work, particularly when I daresay they chase an alley cat.”

“A cat?”

“Oh yes, it chose that exact moment to upturn a nearby rubbish bin, and Humbert was easily enough convinced to follow the trail of the  _escaping thief_.” Gold laughs at his own trifling deception. “At least he locked you someplace where you could be diverted.”

That brings a true laugh to her lips, “Yes, but no light. Can’t read in the dark.” Not that she hadn’t tried. “Now are you going to let me out or what?”

The detective smirks at her, “Oh, I think not, m’dear. At least not yet.” He strides closer, slipping the tantalizingly close key back into his pocket, “Perhaps I like you better this way, you can’t run away on me.”

“Thrown out’s the way I remember it,” Belle corrects.

“Yes, well, you and I remember things a little differently, do we not?” He takes that final step and now they’re close enough to touch—to  _many things_ , in fact. “You dressed to match you spoils I see,” he tells her, fingering the red lace edging of her diamond-shaped neckline. The point extends low enough to offer him an ample view of her chest, the dress itself with its buttons and full bustle shine in the same color taffeta from the gas lamps on the street. “I’ll be having back that ruby now, dearie.”

“I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about, detective,” she breathes, and then, because truly, they are so close, close enough for so many things, she baits, “you’ll just have to search me.”

Gold scoffs, a low, disapproving sound—-he’d always disliked loose women, but his once-housekeeper wore the color so well—-and moves his fingers down to the low points of the bodice, where the buttons began, running his fingers over her puffed up bosom. “Best check here, first,” he says, unsnapping the pressed-metal buttonhooks, one by one.

Smiling, she says, “Only logical starting point.”

After releasing the last button, he slides his hands over her white chemise, to meet in the back, only to bring them back to the front of her torso. In the movement, he slides his thumbs beneath her breasts. “And I am a man of logic,” he tells her, taking hold of the neckline of the undershirt, “after all.” He tugs it down, baring her to his sight. Gold takes in a slow breath at the revelation.

“Find anything, detective?” Belle asks, teasingly over his preoccupation with her exposed chest.

Retrieving his wits, he fans his fingers out across her skin, thumbing her nipples, “Nothing I’d turn over to bloody Scotland yard, that’s for certain,” he bites out, before lowering his head to her neck and kissing her there, below her ear.

He continues to play with her hardened nipples, flicking them, and Belle hums in ascension. She strains against the cuff to press more tightly against him, but when she rises up on her heels, to press their bodies together, to see if he’s missed this as much as she, the woman cries out in pain and falls back against the shelves.

“What is it?” Gold asks, terribly alarmed, thinking he to be the reason for her fit, “What’s happening?”

“It’s nothing,” she says, and forcing a smile, pulls his neck toward her with her left hand, “Kiss me again.”

He takes hold of her wrist with one hand, “Belle,” he says, and when she doesn’t answer, with his other hand, at her neck, he forces her to look at him, “Dearie, look at me, Belle.”

He waits, and finally sighing, she explains, “Twisted my ankle.” It was how she’d come to be lying down, in fact, stumbled upon the idea to play sleeping to the officer, when escape had become out of the question. “These damn skirts.”

With all the method of his partner the doctor, all the concentration of his acute mind, he kneels and begins to reach for her foot beneath the expanse of fabric. “It’s nothing, you needn’t—“

“I’ve got to search here anyway,” he tells her coldly, finally finding her booted, left foot. Gold struggles to unsnap the buttons n her heeled, leather boots, in aubergine. “Goddamn, woman, it would be a feat indeed if you fit anything else in this shoe. Hell, I’d applaud you.” He finally gets the shoe off, with Belle only wincing at the last. They’re too small—stolen items, of course.

“They’re just the thing, says  _Journel des Demoiselles_.”

“What, a size too small?” he asks, sarcastic, looking up at her through his shaggy, dirty locks. Examining the bottom of the shoe, running his thumb along the elevated sole between heel and foot, he adds, “Or stolen?” Setting down the expensive foot where, he takes her limb into his hands.

She laughs, but when he begins to massage her foot, it turns into a moan that she cannot keep quiet (and she wonders at the sound of the wind, if it be him, gasping, in awe, or simply the winter night outside). His hands move up to her heel, examining, and then her think ankle, and when he applies pressure, his face tilted up to hers, eyes shut, he almost forgets about all the pain, both his and hers—until at the pressure, she cries out quietly, a reminder to them both.

“Lord, a mistake. I’m sorry,” he says, and moves to stand, but pained, she puts her left hand to his shoulder.

“No, stay,” Belle asks, and when his face looks sad as she imagines hers to be, she turns the talk light again, “you’ve yet to check my skirts, after all.”

He nods, once, and says (though his heart’s little in it), “I’d hate not to be thorough.” He returns to massaging her foot and ankle, “No permanent damage done, I think,” Gold says, more to himself than she. “Sprained is all.”

Cradling her calf, he moves along, his rough fingers, catching every so often on her stocking. “Something tucked away here, perhaps?” he asks, as he deftly unhooks her suspenders, and tickling her thigh for just a moment, he drags down the thigh-high. When he pulls it off from her foot, the long, silly thing too he discovers to be crimson.

Looking from stocking to woman, he smirks up at her, and with a dirty expression, throws it over his shoulder before he dives back down, below her gathered multitude of skirts. He allows himself the indulgence, nuzzling the smooth skin of her calf. The unshaven, bristly hairs on his cheeks and chin scrape at her, and she gives up a keening sound. “Perhaps Humbert found a wolf after all,” she says.

He chuckles, pleased by that. “You’re the only untamed thing here, m’dear.”

He always had to have the last word, her former employer. Belle smirks, and thinks that if he’s the last word, then she’s the last action, her free hand to his shoulder.

Catching her wrist immediately, Gold sighs, his breath hot against the inside of her knee. “You just can’t help yourself, can you, dearie?”

She giggles, “You wouldn’t like me if I wasn’t a challenge.”

He leans back, and with his other hand, takes back the key that she’d slipped from his vest pocket, while he had been otherwise engaged, tossing it behind his shoulder, far out of reach. “What am I going to do with you?” Gold asks, shaking his head.

“I have a few ideas,” she giggles, wrist still ensconced by his hand.

Absent-mindedly rubbing her calf, he says “I’m sure you do—“ The bohemian halts his eyes falling on the red stocking on his shoulder.

“ _Gold_?” she asks, knowing that look all too well.

“Not now, dearie,” he says. He picks up the ribboned stocking and still having hold of her wrist, secures it likewise to another of the bookshelves, standing. “There yes,” he says, stepping back to survey his work, “I think I rather like you better this way, can’t steal, can’t run—“

“Thrown out,“ she corrects, before huffing, “You’re going to rip it—“ Her words cut off, as his hand dives beneath her skirts and cups her hard at her center.

“You were saying?” He chuckles at her loss of words and slipping beneath the waist of her drawers, he touches her in the way he knows she likes, drawing little circles around her nub, finding her wet for him, as he knew she’d be.

Belle mocks, hating to let her once-lover have the last word, despite her pleasure at his touch. “Find anything?  _Ah_ —” She gasps, as he slips a finger inside her, without warning.

“Oh yes,” he chuckles darkly. “Something of great interest.”

She arches against her bindings, not caring that she’ll rend the stocking entirely, as he adds another finger, to tease her. She moans, “ _Oh, Eli_ —“

He cuts her off, kissing her hard on the mouth. He’d not have his name of her lips—can’t have it. They kiss open mouth and messy, his hand playing her like his cello, the other clutching her neck.

He moves to kiss his way across her jaw, to her ear and down. She rubs her own cheek against his, hair in her face, eyes squeezed shut. “See,” he says, “better this way,” he tells her, and as he finds a rhythm to her liking with his thumb, her moans of ascent revealing her. “You’re far less troublesome this way.”

“I’m always trouble,” Belle confesses, and it’s true. Gold knows it to be true.

“Don’t stop,” she tells him, and of course, he’d be a damn fool to do so. Some would find it troublesome, truly, pleasuring a woman, difficult to do the task while attending to kissing or caressing elsewhere, but as Gold pulls her tight against him, a hand buried in the folds of her bustle, his other driving her to a frenzy in folds of another kind entirely, he finds it to be no trouble at all.

But then, they’re both practiced and known to the other (almost feels homey, he thinks briefly).

The detective presses on, and when he pinches a little harder at that little pearl of hers, she cries out, mouth to his jaw bone, the sound loud and sweet in his ear, coming for him, letting her weight go to her bonds, to him and his arms around her.

As she winds down, she blinks her eyes open, lifting her head form his shoulder. “Perhaps detainment’s not so bad after all,” Belle teases.

Gold shakes his head, “And still you’re able to ridicule me—I had thought myself a touch more skilled than all that.”

She winks at him, “I need proof, detective—your area of expertise.”

He smirks and begins to contend with his belt buckle, wanting very much to prove himself to the lady. As he pulls back, to allow himself space to undress, she strains against her bonds to kiss his neck, but barely grazes it. “The wild thing, indeed,” he tells her, an eyebrow cocked.

She watches him and instructs, wanting less between them “The coat, take it off.” He does so, with harried movements, revealing just how in need of  _proving_ he stands. The heavy wool thing falls to the floor and throws up a cloud of dust. Whether from the floor or coat, Belle knows not.

When he returns to her, she feels the humidity still trapped by all his wrappings, the sweat from their efforts. “Yes,” she whimpers, as his freed and hardened cock presses against her most sensitive center, separated by too many layers of satin and lace.

Gold scrambles to heal the breach, digging through skirt after skirt, untying the lacing of her drawers, and Belle shimmies them to the floor, more than ready to be joined, when she feels them slacken. Finally, gripping her hips, he plunges into her, and both groan for the contact.

The little, tied-up thief throws her head back against the bookshelf, as her body reacts to the intrusion, and then gives itself away, arching toward the invader. He sets them a steady pace, the books answering back each time he reenters her.

“ _French_ ,” he whispers into her neck, and pushing him with her chin, she steadily forces his face out its hiding hole and slips her mouth against his (they didn’t always kiss, when they did this, but tonight, she decided they would).

They kiss, and share their air, and when Belle whimpers, Gold pulls away, whether from the sorrow in the sound, or to watch her face as she makes it, he, an analytical man, knows not—can’t possibly know at all, at a time like this.

At the loss of his mouth, the connection, she begs, “More, please, faster, Eli.”

The sound of his name, so high-pitched on her lips undoes him. He drives into her at a dizzying speed, and at least one book clatters to the ground, at each jarring entry. “Yes, more, _more_ ,” she pants to him.

“Always more with you,” he mutters, very cognizant of the difficulty of stringing together a coherent sentence (and yet, he too, balls deep observes it to hardly be enough, plowing into her, doing his level best to fuck all the oxygen out her lungs and bad lies out her body. It would never be enough, whatever loose threads they clung to in these nights few and far between).

“ _Eli—_ “

He smothers the word again with his mouth, and if he says her name back to her, into her mouth when he comes, he’ll deny it tomorrow.

They breathe together, and fall apart after too few moments. When he lowers her, her barefoot alights on a dropped book, and she laughs lightly. After a moment he too laughs.

When the sound falters, and all that’s left are the two disheveled lovers, staring, he clears his throat, awkwardly, “I’ll just see to your bindings.”

“I’d like that.” She wouldn’t—at least not right now, though in moment, minutes even Belle French would miss her freedom, crave adventure and cave under the weight of being a Kept Woman. She always did.

He first unties her stocking-ed wrist, slinging the red netting over his damp shoulder. He then turns to retrieve the key, almost tripping over the discarded coat, and as he scours the floor for the missing item, Belle realizes Eleazar’s almost as uncomfortable as she.

What a pitiable pair they made—or didn’t, more correctly.

Finally finding it, he raises it with a put-on gesture of success. When she makes no laugh or acknowledgement, he unlocks her in a business-like manner. “There you are.”

She rubs her now free wrist, with a sigh, “Thank you.”

“No matter,” he says, and offering her the stocking back, he says, “Yours.”

She scoffs, “Yes, though it’s in hardly a usable condition now.” Belle watches him as he refastens his pants, slips on his coat. She frowns, “Well?”

“Well, what, dearie?”

“Aren’t you going to arrest me?” she asks as she begins to refasten her bodice

He rolls his eye, “Not tonight. Though,” he pauses, smirking, “I daresay, you’d fit the bill of indecent exposure quite nicely, or at the least disturbance of the peace,” he says, tugging just once on her half done jacket.

“You’re letting me go?” she asks, confused, when he turns away and begins to walk toward the door.

“So it would seem.” His voice takes on a sour note when he adds, “wouldn’t want to worry your fiancé, Mr. Gaston, was it?”

She gulps and toys with the large diamond on her left ring finger. “How thoughtful.” She frowns at the thought of poor, old dull-as-dishwater Godfrey, at home. Probably didn’t even know she was gone.

“Oh, I’m always thoughtful,” At the exit, he tips his head, mussed and disheveled as she, “’till next time.”

She smiles at him, in a sad way that she’s come to connect with Mr. Gold. Alone she redresses, taking care with her swollen ankle. She then returns all the books to their proper places, before slipping into the night.

Once outside, she procures a coach for hire to return her home, and when let out a block away, slips in a first floor window without notice. Later, as she undresses alone in her room, waiting for the bathtub to fill (it wasn’t uncommon for her to allow herself such indulgences, even at odd hours such as these), Belle decides to wear her new treasure and nothing else.

However, as she searches the folds of her bustle for the stolen jewel and fails to find the ruby, she realizes just how thoughtful her Mr. Gold had proven himself to be.


	2. Terrifying Effigies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On Christmas Eve Detective Gold finds his Christmas spirit with the help of thief Belle French. Post Bleak.

Eleazar Gold mumbles the liturgy without much attention to detail—at least of the devout strain.

For the first, he’s alone, which to be frank, he prefers, but for the second, ‘tis Christmas Eve and he’s forcibly attending midnight mass at St. Paul’s Cathedral on Ludgate Hill.

He mumbles to himself, allowing his eyes to wander. The detective would much rather be exploring the whispering galleries, where it’s said even hushed tones can be heard across the room, voices jumping from one locale to another—he’s heard of such phenomena. Such phenomena fails to surprise him, and he’d for some time wondered after such architectural feats (or oversights, as it were), long before Lord Rayleigh’s little discovery. The capital building of the colonies, and even the Heavenly Temple in the East boast such anomalies.

He’d not been able to explore to his curiosity’s content upon his last frequenting of St. Paul’s. Instead, his last visit had found him dashing down the Southwest Bell Tower Staircase, only barely saving a youth upon the late Lord Sutterland’s alter of death. One would think that the almost fatal young woman’s rescue would not ring so rosy in his memory, but compared with the dull liturgy, such adventure would be quite preferable indeed to the anti-social bohemian.

As the midnight mass ends, Detective Gold thinks that perhaps he should have taken up the offer to go out to the country. A touch of family would have done him good, but still trying to unravel his professor’s web, as it slinks steadily across and through all of Europe he dared not tempt fate by leaving town—he dared not leave such a man unchecked for so long a time.

The crowds begin to disperse, and despite his desire to make a break for the exit, he waits for space to breath, wishes a pox upon Nanny Lucas, who earlier in the week had declared she’d not allow the detective any Christmas pudding should he not attend holiday mass (the row had lasted some days, but finally, Gold had caved in to the demands), for he dreads the contact with bumbling persons all about him. That’s another thing too, he despises unsolicited touch, and on the holy night the place of worship brims to capacity. The air stands thick and humid, and he can hardly sway from side to side without knocking another.

When finally there’s room enough to move, Gold strolls to the main doors.  A number recognize the now famous detective (many more than he’d like, despite his best efforts at keeping his likeness out of the papers). The said parents of the youth he saved wave to him, and he dips his head lightly in acknowledgement.

 The gilded doorways stand only a few meters from him, when out his peripheral, Gold notes the Bishop focus in on his person, moving his bulbous body fast as the man can.

The detective scowls; if there is one man with whom he did not plan to waste breath it’s the man of the cloth. He turns and works with even more zeal toward his escape, but the surprisingly fast clergyman catches him, “Detective, detective, a word.”

At the verbal call, Eleazar has no choice but to stop. “Your Excellency,” he says flatly, and without relish kisses the man’s proffered ring, “Captivating service, as always.”

The bearded man chuckles, his waist shaking with it, “Like you’ve anything by which to compare it.”

The surprising frankness catches Gold off-guard, “Well, perhaps.”

“Oh come, man, I know, you’re only here under duress, but let me come to the point,” Gold rolls his eyes, for the man wasn’t known for succinctness, “I see that you’ve yet to respond to my request for help with the recently missing ecclesiastical fragments. My Cambridge fellows are all up in arms at the theft, some of the few examples we have of Hebrew from the Diaspora, and yet, _you_ , my friend,” the tone upon ‘you’ makes Gold feel anything but a friend, “have done nothing for it’s reclaiming—“

“Indeed, but you see as a private detective I retain the right—“

“I believe it all our duty, in secular times such as these to return to our roots, reinvest in the past adherences—“

“You Excellency!” Gold almost jumps as a tiny body pushes past him, taking the stouter man’s ( _the bishop of London, mind_ ) hands into both of hers—indeed, hers, for it is a she, and one that he thinks he knows all too well. “It’s been too long, has it not?”

“Ah, my dear,” the man says, kissing the top of her head, “Indeed it has, it has.”

“Why just yesterday, I believe I saw your Louise and the children leaving a little Viennese bakery, but could not catch them up.” She puts a tiny gloved hand to her breast, “The children, my, my, how they’ve grown.”

“Ah, yes, they do that, do they not? My dear, Louise has been missing you something terrible,” the choke states, having completely forgotten the eccentric detective, “You must come for tea after the holidays, day after Boxing day, perhaps, yes?”

“Oh, that would be a delight!” The little American twitters, and Gold wonders what she’s on about. He makes a quick examination of the bishop, but finds his hands still owning all their jewels. “But we must be off for the evening,” Belle French says, taking Eleazear’s arm, with all her usual possessiveness.

The bishop gives them a slight questioning look, but the woman pushes past it, “You know my great friend and chaperone for the evening—times like these, I’d hardly feel safe without someone at my side, but Detective Gold, he of course, could discourage even the most relentless of attackers.” She laughs and it’s like chimes (rivals all the organs and children’s voices in the grand basilica). “If you’ll excuse us.” She makes a curtsey, and the man after only a little confused hesitation waves them off, turning to greet the queue that’s formed behind them during the little interview.

Gold practically holds his breath, not daring to look at the thief as they leave the church. Once outside he clears his throat to begin his line of questioning when she cuts him to the quick, “You’ve quite the following Eli.” Nudging him in the ribs, she adds, “Who knew you were such a celebrity?”

He scoffs, “Hardly. Damned bishop always trying to get work for free, just because he imagines himself to have the Lord’s damnation and hellfire at his disposal.”

She giggles, “Oh, you’re too hard on him,” She shakes her head, dislodging a few snow flakes that have fallen lightly upon her as they walk, “I quite like Mandell, actually—one of the better ones, in my opinion.”

Gold makes a disinterested grunt, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. They walk in silence, for he’d been too late in his decision to hire a coach, and she, well she could have any number of excuses (or thrown off companions) for being without a ride for the night.

“So where are you taking me?”

“Me?” he laughs, “Clearly, I’m not leading this little crusade. You stole me away from Creighton’s clutches yourself, dear.”

“Stole?” she say incredulous, “Saved is more like.”

True, she saved him from the clutches of the tedious and scraping bishop, but he knew, of course, for her own gains, whatever they be. He harrumphs, “Not for any merit in the deed itself, I’m sure.”

“Oh Eli,” she swats him, with hands bunched up in her muff—the Russian one, if he recalls correctly. “Not everything’s a case, a job, or—“

“A deal?”

She missteps at the mention of their first deal, housekeeper turned thieving informant ( _and then turned out of her arse_ ), hardly noticeable, but Gold takes note, all the same. “No, not everything’s a deal.”

After that, they walk in near silence through the sludge upon the sidewalks. They head vaguely in the direction of his home and the Grand (complete with their old room), but as to their destination, he knows not.

“Are you going to the country tomorrow?” she asks. “To see—“

“No,” he answers harshly, over eager to stop her mouth from working it’s way around anything too dear to his heart, lest she break that like she did his china (and his heart too, Gold supposes).

The last time he’d seen her, on the Tower Bridge she’d said—he shakes his head. Belle had said a lot of things before Sutterland had almost killed her.

No matter. Softer, he adds, “No. Staying in town, this year.” She looks up at him sadly, and he doubts that she did not already know his answer without his having to voice it. “What?” he asks, because he can’t bear the look verging on pity covering her pretty features.

“Oh, nothing,” she smiles then, but it’s a sad smile. “I should go. Late.”

They’ve stopped moving, standing not quite facing one another, but angled toward the other—tentative, mistrusting (completely themselves) as always.

Then, Gold makes a choice. Flippant, he says, “Pity, there’s a bag of chestnuts about to turn.” He pauses, not looking at her, but out the corner of his eye, he sees when she takes his meaning, when she begins to smirk, “I’ll never finish them on my own.”

“Well,” Belle tells him rocking on her toes, tapping him once with her muffed hands, “that would be quite a shame.”

“Indeed, a shame.”

“I could help you with them, if you’d like,” she shrugs, “Hate to see good food go to waste.”

A waste, indeed. He too shrugs, “If you’d like.”

“I would,” she takes his arm again, and they continue their walk through the sullied snow drifts. It’s ruined by dirt and smoke and horse droppings. Belle seems unfazed and when it begins to fall again, light and airy, she reaches a hand from her muff, pulling off her glove, to catch a few flakes in her bare palm. “I love the snow. Reminds me of Maine.”

“Pining for home, are we dearie?”

She laughs, low and a little sad. “’Course not.”

The silence returns, but after she shakes the snow from her hand, she moves to return it to the crook of his arm.

Suddenly a thought occurs to him—something he’d not taken into account prior to his offer of food (and lodging) for the night. Gold takes the full advantage of the opportunity, grabbing her wrist.

“Hey,” she says, startled, “Eli, what are you—“

She stops when she realizes he examines her ring finger. Finding it absent of an embellishment, he releases her. “Just making sure.”

Belle shakes her head, but still takes his arm, slipping her hand back into her muff. “I would have told you, you know.”

He grunts yet another response that gives nothing (and yet everything) away.

—

Upon reaching the doorstep of 221 Spinner Street, Belle says, “What a lovely wreath,” she’s sarcastic, giggling lightly. She full well knows the detective to abhor all things related to aggrandizing the merriment of the season. She plucks at the clearly worse-for-wear greenery, “What happened?”

It’s a terribly sight, ugly and misshapen from numerous tousles between him and Whale. “The doctor insisted.”

“And?”

“I disagreed.” He plucks the thing from the door, scowling, and she laughs again as he unlocks the door for her.

Once tucked away, the still air of the house, chilly, but a relief to the out-of-doors, Gold finds himself unsure. He hardly knows what to do with her, again in his house, after so long. He opens his mouth to speak, hands patting his sides awkwardly, when Belle beats him to it, “Why don’t I fetch us a little something to sip on to warm up, while you go and see about those chestnuts, hm?” she prompts, as she slips off her matching, Russian hat.

He nods absently, and with a shining smile, she’s away. He stares at the space she’d been occupying before finally shaking himself and removing his own coat, hanging it on the rack. It’s strange, he thinks, as he trudges upstairs, obeying her like a dog on a leash, the woman’s likely to know his kitchen better than he.

She, who doesn’t even live there. She, who never really lived there in the first place.

He enters his favorite room, his study, where he sleeps more often than in his bed, and takes most of his meals as well. Looking about, Gold surveys the state of things.

It’s a mess, but there’s no helping that at this point. The tannenbaum too, stands a jumble of half-hearted attempts on Nanny Lucas’ part to get him in the Christmas spirit (and full-hearted attempts on his to do no such thing). It’s tall, but without a topper, leaning back against the far corner, with no base to provide stability. A few candles lay amongst the limbs, and a handful of ribbons and holly sprigs are scattered about haphazard.

It could be worse, he thinks.

He turns to see about the fire, but unfortunately finds himself entirely out of kindling, having been somewhat more a hermit than usual in past weeks. He can think of none of his papers that can be spared for the task, but suddenly a naughty thought comes to him, and by the time Belle enters, tea tray in hand, the fire roars, creating a warm light to the dreary place.

She sets down the tray and as detective Gold eyes the teacups suspiciously, the brew looking too dark for tea with milk, she explains, “Hot chocolate, thought it would be nice with the chestnuts.” She plucks up one of the sticky preserves, “where are they from did you say?”

“Lyon, and they’re called  _marrons glac_ _és._ ”

She smiles, swallows and settling next to the fire, beside his ottoman, she picks up her teacup, “Just like Marguerite Gautier.”

He recognizes Dumas’ protagonist, the demanding courtesan. An apt reference for the thief to make. “Did you ever perform La Traviata?” he asks, now curious, referring to the opera from the man’s work.

She nods, “I did.” Belle sighs into her cup, turning to the fire. Despite the smile, he knows her to be sad. She’s always sad when he brings her opera days to the fore, remembrance of things past, he supposes. Suddenly, she perks up, asking, “Whichever of your many, many papers did you sacrifice for kindling I wonder?”

He chuckles darkly, “None at all.”

“None? What’d you use?” She slips into a casual nor’eastern accent of the colonies. He’s not heard her slip like that for sometime. It’s nice. Warm.

He refrains from answering, only smiling, looking the naughty boy she always calls him.

“How did you— _oh, no_. You didn’t use what I think you used?” she asks, eyes narrowing, looking around the room for the missing item.

“You won’t find it, dearie.”

“You did, didn’t you!” she declares, eyes wide and shocked, “You used the wreath.”

He laughs at that, pleased with himself as she shakes her head. He takes the moment to simply enjoy the view, her at his feet, relaxed and at ease. The light catches her hair, and now that she’s taken off her coat, he finds her in nothing but a plain dinner gown. The color of it too is set off by the fire, complimenting the warm pallor of her skin, exposed at the chest and past the elbow. 

She turns back to him, resting her head on the edge of the ottoman, barring her unadorned neck to him. She’s worn no jewelry, and it suits her, a bare neck, and at the thought he realizes then what he intends to do. “Dearie,” he gestures as he sets down his own cup, “fetch me that wooden box below the far right stack of papers on my desk.

Belle frowns, “Why?”

“Don’t be difficult, girl,” he answers, gruff, and though she rolls her eyes, she stands and makes her way across the room. Gold watches, but his nerves get the better of him and he stands, putting his hands to his pockets. He walks over to the tree, observes the candles there, long as he can stand still. He takes out his pipe and sucks at it, idly, waiting, all the while, listening to her rummaging.

“This one?” she asks, the unlocked chest in hand.

“Yes,” he takes it from her and returns to his armchair, she to the floor.

“What is it, Eli?”

He unlocks and opens it, but does not reveal the contents, “A gift, if you’ll have it.” Gold says under his breath, and ruder too.

She smiles wide at that, “A gift, for me?”

“Indeed.” She stares up at him, happy as any little thing on Christmas morn, and he knows he must break the tenderness of the gesture, add a bite to it, “Don’t seem so surprised, m’dear, surely you’re gifted more than enough from you many suitors.”

She frowns at that, “Yes, but those aren’t gifts for nothing, you see.”

“Oh, I see,” he tells her, laced with innuendo, but he regrets it instantly, the unkindness, the cruelty of his words (and truly, he feels himself to be such a monster at times, terrifying as any of those painted effigies adorning St. Paul’s Cathedral). “For this however,” the detective amends as best he can, “you must only do one thing.”

She’s intrigued, he can see that easily enough—intrigued and suspicious: “What must I do?”

“You must not break it.”

“Break it?” Belle asks, eyebrows scrunched, and she leans forward to see the item in question, and finally he relents, revealing a pearl necklace, long enough so as to reach the waist, if not worn with some artistic twist or knot.

“Indeed, if you don’t break it,” he tells her, holding it up for the greedy thief’s inspection, “it’s yours.”

She reaches a dainty hand, and under her thick lashes, which look a rich color, same as her hair, in the firelight, smirks up at the detective. “Wicked man,” she says, but as she licks her lips to continue, he thinks she’s not opposed to the idea. She opens her mouth to comment, but in an instant, she turns sharply, “What a lovely tree, Eli.”

Belle stands with the agility and poise of a dancer (or a fighter—and her knows her to be proficient at both) and skips to observe the sadly leaning Christmas tree.

He turns with some trouble, his back sore—for he’s not moved from his chair, and out the room even less—and watches her raise that little, pearly hand from one hanging adornment to the next. “It’s beautiful,” she says, soft. “Reminds me of Maine too.”

“A poor excuse for a tannenbaum, if you ask me,” Gold snorts, “less than whatever you’re used to, I’m sure.”

Belle answers as though she’d hardly heard him, “When I was little,” she begins, or perhaps she’d heard him all too well, and that’s exactly why she explains, “we never had a tree.”

How foolish of him, of course, the poor little bastard wouldn’t be used to much in the way of Christmas frivolity. He stands confidently, hands back to his pockets—she need not notice the fumble he’d made, forgetting her humble beginnings. Setting down the necklace, he walks to over to her.

“But there were always plenty of pines, and a few of the ritzy families dressed up the trees behind their houses in the woods.”

He can hear the smile in her voice, the smile of a girl who grew up with nothing, “I’d go out there, when I was little, to look. No candles, of course, but some ribbons and bows, shiny baubles, and the like, you know.”

Gold halts, coming to stand behind. He hears the shift in her breath, knows she knows him to be almost upon her. Slowly, he raises a hand to move her hair off to one shoulder, revealing a row of fabric-covered buttons, spanning neck to spine. Gently, he undoes one button, and then the next and the next after that. The subtly patterned fabric gives way with only a little resistance.

“The lights are my favorite,” she says, soft, raising her hand to one of the candles. She moves her long, painted fingernail as if to swim through the flickering flame, but Gold catches her hand in his before she reaches her aim.

“Don’t. You’ll burn yourself,” he whispers to her neck, kissing the revealed skin there, the hairs too, tapering off to an unruly and curling ‘v’ at her nape.

“Don’t tell me what to do, Mr. Gold,” she retorts, but there’s little edge to it.

“I’ll do as I please,” he answers, kissing his way to her collarbone, undoing button after button. She sighs, at the feel of his hot breath against her skin. “Beside, if you’re bad, you won’t get your gift.” He slides his hands into the soft, worn fabric (and he’s realized it’s an old dress—so unlike the ostentatious gowns he usually finds her flaunting) of her dress, without even corset or whalebone, to touch her slim waist. It always shocks him her size, perhaps because he forgets himself so small or she with all her plumage and deckings and frills, how small, impossibly small, the woman is. “Now don’t tell me you don’t want that?”

He nips at the skin of her neck, and she scowls, “Wicked man.” At that, she dances away, faster than he has time to stop. She comes to stand before the fire, the light still dancing, (and it’s a little smoky, the wreath as kindling, but the smell is sweet and pleasant). “But I’ve nothing to give you, Eli.”

He visualizes himself (for he does it often enough, weighing pros and cons, action and subsequent reaction and outcome) saying something to the effect that she’s more than gift enough, watches in his mind’s eye his mouth forming the words, but then instead hears himself say, “I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

Belle takes the challenge, and what with the cloth buttons undone already, she pulls the dress from her shoulders, revealing herself, collar, breasts, and stomach, to him.

He looks her over, the dress folded at her waist rightfully a ridiculous sight, but he cannot find it in himself to make light. With hands in his pockets he strides to her.

As he walks, she bends down and picks up the pearls. She examines them in the firelight. “They’re quite heavy.”

“Yes, they are,” Gold answers, coldness creeping in, he adds, “never held the real thing before, dearie?”

She frowns at him, playful and not the least hurt. She unclasps them, moving to the put the long strand, reaching about the length of her navel, around her neck when he catches her wrist. “Ah-ah,” Gold admonishes. “Our wager, if you’ll recall.”

“Wager? Isn’t that more the doctor’s area of expertise, hm?”

“On his behalf then, as a matter of scientific inquiry.” She looks at him with scrutiny, and still he holds her wrists, “Which will win out, your love of money, or your self-restraint? These are quite old you see, the string near to rotting, the slightest tug and they’re likely to break loose.”

“Oh, wicked, wicked man.” She turns her palms up, despite the hold, the necklace now an offering back to him, “But I’ll play your game.” He lets her go, taking the pearls, in one, but as he reaches for her again with the other, she evades him, ducking down, “But first, I must fold this up before it wrinkles something horrible.”

She slips under his arm, wiggling out of the dinner dress in the process. As she bends to fold it and lay it over his armchair, Gold observes her.

True enough, she’s a tiny thing.

She’s stands in nothing but pantaloons and knitted knee socks, a tiny waif of a thing, and he wonders in brief if she’s eating, but then shakes out of the morosity—sillier than Nanny Lucas, he’s getting becoming.

She stands, hands on hips, and with a deep breath, Belle says, proud as queen, “Alright, I’m ready, Eli.”

His cock twitches as the sight, and truly, he can hardly hide the fact he’s growing harder by the second, the continuation of a process of stiffening that began the minute she slipped her arm into his at St. Paul’s, the house of God—oh how far his lack of conscience has carried him hence, and still farther yet to go, and surely, surely there’s a place reserved in hell for men like him.

He says nothing, and in response, proud and happy, she trounces up to him, planting a solid kiss to his mouth. As he turns his head to deepen it, reaches to pull her close, let her feel just how wicked he is, Belle steps back, grinning.

As he blinks his eyes open, detective Gold sees that she’s lifted her open-palmed hands level with their chins, proffering her wrists to him.

Swallowing, his Adam’s apple bobbing, he quickly wraps the pearls in two tight loops around each wrist. Once he refasten’s the clasp (old and a bit tarnished, but real gold—the necklace had been his lady mother’s after all. He does not linger long over that particular detail), he reaches down to cup her twin breasts, young and firm. She’s such a beauty, so perfect, his little bobtail.

As he tweaks her nipples, she makes a pleased sound (and again his length jumps to answer it); she’s been with men on four continents, and all over the city, and yet she still holds him in thrall. He’s helpless to her, topless, curls loose, eyes shut, and a slight upturn playing on her lips.

However, when her tied hands reach up to cradle his face he drops her breasts, grabbing her wrists instead, “Oh, no, dearie.” He walks her backward until the back of her legs hit his armchair.

Chancing a looking behind her shoulder she asks, ‘Here?”

“Yes,” he says, while untying her drawers. They fall to the floor, and pushing her backward by the shoulder, she falls to sitting with an _oomph_. Wasting no time, he kneels and grabs the backs of her knees, pulling her to the edge of the chair.

Still trying to regain her balance, Belle wobbles, but sighs as his lips connect to her leg, the inside of her knee. Looking at the man, with his head, steadily kissing his way upward, Belle’s back arching with each wet caress, she can’t help but recall her days as housekeeper, and wonder if perhaps his favorite chair isn’t right for them to be defiling upon, “I don’t think you’ve thought this through, Eli—“

She cuts off as he bites the inside of her thigh. True, he prided himself on a mild obsession to cleanliness with a few of his personal affects, his firearms, his lock-picking kit, but the chair would only increase in value should it be damaged in any way from their present activities. He smirks, rubbing the growth of the day’s beard against her softest skin. “There’s a simply solution here, Miss French.”

“Yes, and what’s that?” she asks, panting a little, for he faces her center, on the verge of tipping the velvet, and he can positively feel her rattling with the anticipation.

Gold looks up at her, roguish and no terrifying devil depicted in St. Paul’s could possibly hold a candle to him, catching her eyes, “Don’t get my chair dirty.” He turns down, closing his eyes and says, “Simple as that,” before moving his tongue into her folds.

He’s little shocked at the heat of her, for there’s a chill to the room despite the fire. He laves his tongue over her, around her the nub at the top of her slit, and even before he himself had planned, he dips into her, tasting her, the richness there. When he feels her begin to clench herself, wanting more, and panting for him, slouched on his armchair, he clutches at her thighs, a tight enough hold to keep her still.

She’s a greedy wanton, but then so is he.

Gold pulls her closer, pushing his tongue into her, and when she cries out, he can’t help himself: He moves one of her legs to sit on his shoulder, and plunges without ceremony or warning, two fingers deep into her depths. “Is this what you want?” he asks, mouth still practically upon her.

Belle moans from the vibrations of his speech.

He pumps his two fingers, loading her, like he’d load a pistol, and with the same sort of purposeful determination. The action draws squelching noise from her quim, and smug, he says, “I told you not to get my chair dirty.”

Belle’s tied hands, land on his head, and she yanks on his hair, in no gentle motion, “It’s your fault.”

“So i’tis,” he says before sucking hard at her clit.

That finally sends her over the edge, and with a high pitched yell, she calls out, her body clenching around nothing, before slumping back against his chair.

Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he looks at the oblivious girl, hair wild, still breathing heavy, one sock fallen and bunched at her ankle. She’s a heavenly sight.

“Come’ere, you,” he says, despite the fact that she’s not listening—hardly capable—despite the fact that he need not beckon her, she’d come to him willingly, on nights like tonight. He takes the loose-limbed girl up into his arms, behind the knee and shoulders, and sets her down on the floor before the fire, on the Persian rug, where more often than not he spends his nights—he’s never been one to favor a bed when filled with only one inhabitant.

As her breathing slows, her chest heaving, breasts rolling like waves, he rises from his knees, and begins to undress.

—

Belle blinks slowly, and hums to herself lightly. She feels warm and her blood jumps from the detective’s rigorous attentions—she’d always said she’d never had a taste for the pretentious mouths of the upper classes, but as always, she has to make an exception in his case.

She watches as he takes off his vest, and gets to work at unbuttoning his shirt. “Thank you,” she says languidly.

“My pleasure,” he quietly answers.

Stretching, her back arching off the floor, thighs tightening, she smiles, when she catches him watching her movements. Belle’s eyes drift downward to the prominent bulge in the man’s trousers. With newfound energy, she sits up to kneeling, and with hands tied, she grasps at his waist. “I thought of a gift.”

“Now, I—“

He stops, as Belle’s thumbs run up the center seam of his pants, and even through the linen he can feel her manicured, little nails. She presses her face to him, and he can feel her smiling.

She was always eager, his little maid.

“Belle,” he growls, as her hands make quick work of his waistband, and the pants fall to the floor. Her capture hands, as if in prayer to those icons at the cathedral, take hold of his cock, hard and hot, but he grabs the hair at the nape of her neck, and one of her wrists, pulling her back, forcing her to turn her attentions back up to his face.

“Yes, detective?” Belle asks, looking up at him with all innocence of a child from the rural forests of the colonies.

He’s not fooled in the least. “Fie,” he pushes her and she falls on her rump on the Persian rug.

She watches as he quickly takes off the rest of his clothing. She feigns disinterest, to the contrary, crawling to the coffee table. She takes her time to roll a sticky chestnut between her fingers before popping it into her lips. As she sucks the caramelized sugar from each of her fingers, with a popping sound, she looks up, carnal intent evident in her expression, to find her lover naked as the first man in Arcadia, the look in his eyes, focused on the finger in her mouth, to match her own carnality.

He too, moves to his knees, reaching to take her, but she beats him to the collision, coming to stand on her knees before him, and suddenly his cock nestles itself among her curls, and the wetness lodged there in her madge, rolling down to welcome him. He groans, his mouth gasping as she kisses him.

She laughs lightly, her chest shaking with it. She raises her captured hands between them—for he holds her tight at the hips, keeping her heat all to himself and his manhood—and slips them around his head. “Oh, Mr. Gold, such a fine host.”

“Wouldn’t want to be remiss,” he mumbles kissing her sticky mouth, and as they focus on their tongues touching, slipping on lips—exploring—he lifts her.

Belle holds her breath for the entrance, but it never arrives. Her head tilts curiously, when she realizes instead, his length’s trapped between her thighs, below where she’d actually wish it to be at present.

“You’re horrible, Mr. Gold,” she chastises into his jaw line, nipping him there, until she reaches his ear, and with her own wicked plans at temptation, she takes his lobe into her mouth, sucking it fiercely, “So, so wicked,” she whispers quiet as a dove.

It has the desired effect.

Grasping with a ferocity, he wraps his arm around her waist and the other at her thigh and brings them to lie on the rug before the fire—hot on one side, chill to the other, and the feeling’s an intoxication. It’s not a moment more, and he’s within her, enveloped.

She calls out at the intrusion, her neck arched, head pressed to the rug.

“Ah, ah,” he tells her rising up, putting space between them. Gold removes her arms from around his neck. “The pearls. They’ll break.” He keeps a tight hold on her elbow, and she does not fear that the man’s stronger than she, rather the idea thrums through her, exciting her.

Next, he dips his head, tugging at her one nipple, and then the other (both in equal measure, always logical, her detective). He uses his teeth on them, and she calls his name, twice. In contrast, the man keeps his thrusts shallow. “Patience, dearie.”

She makes a whine, her fists clenching, her center too, beckoning him deeper. “I won’t break them, I promise,” she gasps.

He gives in finally, and kissing her hard on the mouth he plunges into her, deep and fast. Releasing her arm, he slips his own around her middle, pulling her tight to him.

Belle takes the opportunity to lock her arms around his neck once again, keeping him close for the kissing. The strong muscles in her arms, little but formidable (and how he’s seen her divest assailants and any who would dare stand in her way—she’s a brave and powerful thing, this wild woman in his arms), he can feel clamped together around his shoulders. She uses only her biceps, moving not her forearm, to keep the pearl strand unmoving, untearing, as he fucks her before the fire.

“Careful dearie,” he says, and she’s about to ask why, when he reaches a hand between them, twists forefinger and thumb around her clit and she’s coming again, in the back of her mind, only barely remembering not to break the necklace.

She can feel it when he’s close. Gold moves one leg to perch upon his shoulder, prigging her hard. A handful of pumps and he spends himself.

He collapses upon her. They lay, panting, and she pats his hair as best she can when tied up and completely exhausted. Gentle, smacking kisses he places on her neck, messy signs of affection, while his hands undo the clasp. Hastily he hooks it round her neck, catching a few of her wild hairs in the process.

She’s about to admonish him, but he’s already asleep, head on her chest, and in another moment, so is she.

—

Belle wakes a few hours later. The fire still burns, but it’s lower now. Carefully dislodging the snoring detective’s arm, Belle rises and takes a turn about the room. Discarded by his desk, she finds his dressing gown. She dons it, but leaves the belt untied.

She always did like his clothes on her.

As she looks about, she rubs her sore wrists. The smooth pearls did not bruise, but her muscles ache with the strain of keeping still. He’d never ask her to stay, but the thief thinks that her detective very much likes not letting her leave.

She’s read that philosopher, Freud, she believes the name to be, and come across something about what’s unsaid—actions revealing intent. All very fascinating—all very telling.

Eli always tying her up, trying to keep her.

At the desk she rummages about, quietly, seeing what she can dig up.

On a whim, she picks up a periodical. This surprises her, for her Mr. Gold isn’t one to invest in such trivialities.

“Whale leaves them lying around,” his drowsy voice calls from the Persian rug. “I peruse them when I’m of a mood. Johnstone’s doing well enough at editor,” he says, within his own mind, speaking over her, “but he’s no Bagehot, to be sure. As good as Palgrave, I suppose.”

She looks down at the recent issue of _The_ _Economist_. The names are a trifle to Belle. Her professor has mentioned one or two, she believes, political, learned men. She sighs at the thought, wishing tonight were not a night for business. “Can I keep this?” she asks, not quite knowing why.

Gold arches up, looking at the paper in her hand upside down. “I suppose so. Already read that one.”

She nods, smiling a little sadly, “You look tired, Eli.” Belle walks back to him, and exchanging the academic journal for another chestnut, adds, “He’s wearing you out, isn’t he?”

“Not in the least, I assure.” The man cups her calf. It fits perfectly in his palm, and when he leans in to kiss her knee, Belle blushes at the memory of him all but devouring her. She loves that, that he loves her, the taste of her, but behind the blush and the heat, she feels him bristle, can feel him dying to ask, prepares herself to lie to him about her professor, her jobs and deals. However, Eleazar surprises her: “Come back to bed.”

She smiles truly and returns to his side. Nestling into him, Belle asks, “How anyone can sleep on Christmas morning I’ll never know?”

“We’ll manage,” he answers, and pressing a kiss to her forehead falls back into slumber.

Yes, Belle suppose, they’d manage, for a few more hours, at least.

—

The erstwhile detective wakes to the doorbell ringing.

She’s gone of course, but yet he still half heartedly runs down the stairs, imagining perhaps she’s brought him breakfast and the paper, that she’s come back to him—a long held desire that one. He opens the door, holding his breath for some miracle.

“See you divested your self of our wreath,” the good doctor tells him.

Gold scowls, “My wreath, you don’t live here, and thus the wreath is entirely my own.”

“Yes and who purchased it?” the younger man asks.

“Your little fiancé,” he retorts harshly.

“But with my money. So it is therefore at least half mine.” He gives the detective a reluctant smile as he steps in from the cold, “Happy Christmas.”

The man sighs, “Is it?” But they smirk like ridiculous clowns or betting men on a winning streak, and Whale pats him on the shoulder. “You look well man. Finally slept did you?

Gold’s eyes narrow, “Rang you early, did she?”

“She?” the doctor asks, but it’s an act, and they both know the other’s stands unconvinced. “Why didn’t you tell me you weren’t going to the country?”

Damn French and her meddling—if he’d wanted to spend bloody Christmas with the bleeding married sops, he’d have bloody well asked. Gold scowls, “Didn’t come up.”

“You’re impossible,” Whales says, shaking his head. “Come on then, let’s get you into something proper and off to Mary’s for supper.”

“Must I?” Gold groans.

“You must—I don’t think I can take another minute alone with the mother.”

“Well you know what they say.”

“No, enlighten me.”

“The mother being a daguerreotype of what you’ll have on your hands in a few years.”

The doctor looks positively roguish when he cheekily replies, “Didn’t say she wasn’t a handsome woman.”

Gold rolls his eyes, but all the same mutters, “Happy Christmas, Victor.” After which, he trudges upstairs to put on a mostly clean suit of clothing.

He does not, in his rush, bother to peak in at his growing wed, his trail on the professor with chalk on his lapels and a gun in his cuff, set up in the doctor’s former practice room, so it takes him until boxing day to note the missing articles (three and one of the more difficultly procured ones at that), which after glares from the happy couple and innumerable arguments with the Morstan matron, the losses to the woman divest Gold of the rest of his Christmas spirit entirely.

Ba humbug indeed.


	3. Blame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a night at the opera, con-woman, Belle French spends a passionate night with detective Eleazar Gold, despite orders to the contrary, but there are consequences to all such liaisons…

The woman finds him, easily enough, in one of the college’s auditoriums.

He’s standing in as conductor for a fellow gone out for the day on business. Belle settles into a seat in the back to wait for the practice to conclude. He’s not expecting her to call on him today, however the thief very much doubts he’ll be surprised; precious little gets past her man these days.

The university’s men’s choir stands not too an unfortunate lot for such a small collection of scholarlies, she thinks—if hers is any ear by which to judge.

She watches the conductor, listens to his voice reverberate throughout the hall. His hands inundate her study, despite their weathered look, their aged nature. He’s captivating, though an ugly man—even she, an admirer and connoisseur of the sex, must admit.

After half an hour, he dismisses the students with a none too disgusted a wave, and they scurry forth. She smirks behind a hand—he does incite fear, this one, as she better than most, knows. As the choir disperses, a stout tenor recognizes her upon approach, “You?”

She raises her eyebrows, the picture of coquetterie, “Me?”

The well-built boy is not deterred (though obviously less sure than heretofore), “No, I—I know you. You sang, in La Scala.”

She beams putting a hand to her kerchiefed breast. “Singing, oh you do flatter me, Sir,” she twitters.

“No, no, I—I saw you, with my parents, when summered in—“

“Milan,” the man states coldly, clapping a hand on the lad’s shoulder (and Belle French pities him), “ _La Traviata_. Your first lead role, was it not, my dear?”

She shivers and nods, “Yes.”

“ _Godiam, fugace e rapido è il gaudio dell’amore_ ,” he rambles out, “isn’t that right, son?”

The youth looks between them, “Uh, my Italian’s not—well it’s—“

“Yes, but Italian’s not a hare’s breadth from Latin.”

The boy fiddles with his thick hands (rugby player, she ponders, stocky build and rather pleasing features. Father must be proud), but says nothing.

“No Latin, as well,” the gentleman raises an incredulous brow, “is that so? Mister Chandler, was it,” he does not wait for the pitiable boy to nod, “and you had scientific aspirations?”

“Physics,” the student corrects, clearing his throat, “sir, I have physics—been studying, that is—sir.”

“Hm, indeed,” he answers, distracted. “How long?”

Always with the questions. Socratic method, a familiar voice offers the back of her mind as identification to the technique.

“A half and two years.”

Belle French frowns. Poor soul.

“Well then,” the man replies, arms locked behind his back, appraisingly. He leans forward, crowding the younger, “from now on, we will be studying harder at the Old Language, won’t we?”

The boy nods and scurries away—to the Latin section of the library, she can only guess. A pity, she thinks, he ought spend his last precious semester in good company (and in the attempt to secure a place before being turned out of the dormitories, as he surely shall).

“Fleeting and quick, indeed, eh?” he references back to his pretentions to quote opera arias.

“That was rather harsh,” she offers. He registers the statement not.

“The cretins admissions suffers us these days,” he tells her, shaking his head.

“He can’t be all that dull. Not everyone makes a study of Verdi’s opersa, as we. Likely, the boy only saw it once—“

She cuts off at his sudden step against her person. They stand abreast. She fights to rein in her heaving at the proximity. Slowly, measured, he raises one of those captivating hands to the bit of nasturtium lace she wears about her neck as adornment. “What brings you this far out the city,  _Violetta mia_?”

Belle suppresses a shudder, but the hairs on her neck revolt from their pins and upbraiding. Instead, she smiles, “I’ve come to see how you are.”

The man chuckles, rolling his eyes, “You think yourself so coy, don’t you.” He moves his hand to twine a loosened lock of her hair. She leans back, but he doesn’t let go and the tug stops her movements. “A problem?”

“You make very free with my person, Professor Zosowlski,” it’s a warning dressed as a tease.

He’s unfooled, knowing who holds the power between the two, “I’m free with all things that are mine, Miss French.” He drops the hair, steps back and offers her his dust-speckled arm, “let us finish this discussion in my offices—“

“ _No_.” Belle speaks sharply, at the dark turn of his eye upon her, she amends, softer, “No, I have to go, you see, now, or I’ll not make it back to the city in time.”

He tilts his pointed chin in question, and with the froth of pale hair and bushy eyebrows, he’d make a rather funny picture, a cartoon drawing she’d see in one of her magazines, _Punch_ or  _Le Charivari_ , but it’s not humorous and only incites fear in her.“In time for what, pray?”

 _“Don Giovanni,_ I only came to tell you that I’ll be making use of your Covent Garden box tonight.”

His gaze narrows, and smirking he asks ( _questions, questions, questions_ ), “Strange. I was under the impression, you preferred  _The Magic Flute_.”

She almost laughs, for neither of them labor under any impressions, and he’s suspicious; she knows that much, to be sure. “Yes, but variety can be no great evil, surely you can admit?”

He eyes her face something fierce—as he did the stout student—before answering in kind, “Right you are, Miss French.” He gives her a minuscule nod, and for the briefest of moments, she imagines herself safe. Then he adds, “Too right, too long have I kept to my books and my Schubert: I’ll accompany you.”

Her intestines clench at the sentence; the adventuress balks.

He smiles at her discomfiture, “That stands no problem? It is my box, after all.”

Recovering she simpers, “Not at all, Bradford.”

“Come, come,” he ushers her up the aisle, all decided, “we’ll take my coach.”

-

It takes her until Act II to find them. Luckily seated across from the professor’s balcony box (just as her informant had said to her that morning by note to her at the Grand) the pair sits mingled in the slips above them.

She finds the two men not alone.

True, she’d expected to see the Doctor’s soon-to-be wife, the young Morstan girl, in attendance, but what she’d not expected to see: another woman beside the detective. She’s black hair and certainly decked for the night in frippery, Belle spies through her opera glasses. Too, the woman’s not unpretty, she must admit.

Gold cuts himself a fine a figure as any man in attendance, Belle must also admit.

Having for the moment, sated the true interest in the night’s proceedings, she returns her gaze to the stage. The rake hero’s just got the upper hand over murderous Masetto, when her traveling companion and employer returns from some interview that had taken up the whole of the intermission into this, the second Act—something to do with this nasty business of his (upon which Gold’s web grows).

“This part’s one of my favorites,” he tells her, as Giovanni runs off laughing, leaving the battered and helpless Masetto in his wake.

“Why?” she asks, “Masetto has the last laugh. He’ll catch him up next scene.”

The professor scoffs at her, “Aye, but my dear, liars are always smoked out in the end. Are they not?” He speaks down to her, like always.

Zosowlski thinks her nothing but a stupid, American whore. She knows this to be true, but was it not she who first knew these two to be so perfectly matched and in tune with one another? Was it not she who knew that if any could take on this great and terrible man, it would be her Eleazar?

(But at what cost, she asks herself, not for the first time.)

She’s more than her birth, more than her body. The professor doesn’t see that. Few do. 

(Eli does.)

She shrugs impassive, “Depends upon the lie, I’d say.”

“Or the seeker.” She flits her eyes to the professor, but he himself entirely engaged at present with the course of action on stage.

She too, returns to it, and not until many scenes hence, does she spare a moment to look again at the party of four above: Scene V, and she waits, for Gold says the same, pointing out this juncture, every time he goes to see  _Don Giovanni_. He’s like a child, in that at times, his delight in the cleverness off the artiste. It begins, the older woman—though still well below the man’s own age, and truly, she’s not a bad morsel to behold—swatting him with her fan, silencing him, Belle assumes, as Gold tells the doctor this tidbit, as he does every time.

She watches Eleazar laugh, watches his mouth move:  _“That’s his own piece, Whale, from_ Figaro _. Love that, the cheeky bastard, using his own works as background.”_

She does not realize her own mouth too, moves…

“You miss him.”

She jumps half out her seat at the older man’s voice, dropping the theater binoculars. He bends to retrieve it, and taking it up for himself, he eyes the detective across the way, “Cozy little group they make.” He passes her back the item, and when she does not answer him, he adds, “Or didn’t you agree?”

Belle makes no answer, fixing her stare most resolutely on the scene before her of Giovanni taunting the poor Elvira.

“Would you like to know who she is?”

Yes, Belle thinks, very much. “I don’t want to know.”

The man smiles, though she doesn’t look at him, her hands tight about the handle of her stolen glasses, “She’s very soon to be the doctor’s mother-in-law. A one, Anita Morstan, and not of entirely English stock, I think.” He pauses a moment, “Young, for a widow, and still in her charms.”

He strikes to hurt, the former Prima Donna notes.

“They’re sure to spend much time together,” his voice caresses, “what with the one couple. Such things, have at times, been known to incite the most interesting of matches.”

Her lip quivers, her arms shaking a little, but whether from despondency or fury, the foreigner could not say.

“Or didn’t you know your hermit’s been out and about with the Mrs. Morstan?” he poses facetious.

“How would I?” she pushes back, “I’m on strict orders to do no such.” Belle mentions the most recent of his demands, instituted since their Christmas dalliance, the last in a line of continued tightening of the laces about her life and freedoms. He’s restricting her movements more and more these days, but no blow fell so loud as that.

 “Quite right.” He’s silent a moment, and Belle prays their interview over, but of course, no such good graces lands upon her lot. “Have you,” he begins slowly, ponderingly, as if the notion only just struck him, “ever wondered why he took you on in the first place?”

She frowns, her teeth clenching. Yes, of course, she has.

“Perhaps, my dear, you resembled a past dalliance.” Belle’s head snaps to face him, shock painted on it. “Or did you think yourself the only young maid in his employ with whom he’s pully-hawlied?”

Her mouth drops open, but he raises his finger to it, shushing her to quiet. Gently, he takes in her visage, tears and astonishment. “You miss him,” he observes once again, “but does he miss you?” the professor asks with all the genuine curiosity of a man delved in the life of the mind.

“I—I don’t know,” Belle whispers.

Smiling, he runs a finger up her rouged cheek, “We’ll just have to see, won’t we?”  

-

She gives the professor the slip quickly after the end of the show, feigning headache. He seems little worried over her, setting out back to his apartments closer to the university, leaving her to retire in her rooms at The Grand. After exchanging her fulsome gown and stolen jewelry (or gifted—the current benefactor’s not above the occasional token of thanks) for the more practical menswear, she slips into the night, thinking to herself: the farther, the better.

She finds 221B Spinner Street much the same as her last visit, months prior, and after picking the locks on the backdoor, finds it empty of her detective. She shrugs, and makes her way upstairs to his apartment. She’ll draw a bath while she waits for him to return, much as in the old days. He’d never begrudged her that indulgence, for he’d a fine bathroom in which to make her toilet.

As the water runs, she takes stock of his rooms, a sheen of dust about them (and perhaps she’d have a chat with the new keeper before she takes her leave tomorrow) as well as general disarray. Belle doubts Eli uses the room as little more than storage for his clothe and other miscellaneous chinoiserie.

She slips off her men’s trousers and shirt, as well as her under things, and with not too much effort, she finds a discarded dressing robe. It’s musky, smelling of him—and could do for a good washing, honestly, but she doesn’t care. She slips it on to cover herself, before looking for salt, soaps and softeners. She finds Gold to have none at the ready, but behind the hidden panel in the linen closet, she finds her bath garnishes right where she’d left them (hidden, lest her master toss them out in ignorance or anger—both equally likely). She adds them to the waters, and then turns to herself in the mirror. It too, needs a cleaning, smudged this way and that.

Yes, she’d need to have a word with this Mrs. Lucas before she left, tsking light to herself—or at the least, leave a very stern note.

After rubbing out most of the marks with her sleeve, she takes stock of her reflection, in Gold’s dressing gown, her hair still done up with pins, the better to be hid beneath a boy’s cap. She leaves it, and happily enough, her image pleases her. She toys with the front of her coiffe, fussing over a few loose curls, when she hears the front door slam.

Smiling ear to ear, Belle French realizes her Mr. Gold’s in a right foul mood.

She throws off the dressing gown to let it lie where it lands and all but hops into the copper tub. She squeaks at the heat of it, but sinks down to the neck, closing her eyes to the serenade of stomping. Belle hears him stop at the landing, noting the crack of light beneath his door, surely.

He enters cautious and walks to the bathroom, but still she keeps her eyes shut. “I see when I purchased that new lock for the back door, I was throwing m’money away.”

She cracks one eye up at him, “Not from my vantage point.”

“Oh har har,” he tells her, but the words seem a touch off their mark.

Belle opens both eyes to make an account of him, but one look and she realizes instantly: “You’re drunk.”

“And you’re in my bathtub,” he says, swaying only a little, “naked.” He shrugs, as she still stares at him in censure, “Only a wee bit.”

She rolls her eyes and sighs, “I expected better, detective.”

He snorts down at her, his dress entirely disheveled, “No, you didn’t.” He walks right up to the tin and runs a hand through the bubbles. He stares at them curiously, asking, “Where’d these come from?”

“From my things,” she answers.

He takes her reply in stride, asking nothing further, and moving to kneel down, almost loses his balance. He grips the side of the over-large basin, and it tips dangerously, before he rights it and himself.

Belle makes a small scream, clutching at the sides, “ _Eli_!”

He smiles, boyish in his charms, despite his sharp features (and sharper personalities). “Sorry,” stands his only amends, his eyes pinned to her person—and rather below her face.

She realizes, upon his almost upturning the bathtub, she’d sat forward, giving the detective a plentiful view of her bosom. She throws a hand to cover her chest, leaning back to hide it below the water’s surface.“Terrible man,” she huffs. Opening her mouth, she almost asks what on earth happened to inspire the drinking spree, but realizes at the last moment that it would reveal her to have been in attendance at  _Don Giovanni_  as well (and watching him, what’s more). Mustn’t have that.

“What?” he asks, his messy hair falling forward as he takes another step closer.

“Nothing.”

“Oh no, dearie, you’ere about to say something.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“You  _were_ ,” he points a finger, but she shakes her head.

“Honestly, Eli, you’re always so suspicious— _ahh!_ ” she squeals as, thrusting a hand into the water, he grabs hold her ankle. He gives it a little tug, enough to make Belle grasp the edges of the copper bath for purchase again (as well as baring her charms again). “ _Eli!_ ”

She wriggles in his grasp, as he laughs at her, drink giving him a playful air, but his hold’s not to be thrown off. Frowning at him, for all her bits being revealed to him without preamble, she bristles, and using her free leg kicks a large measure of water at him without thought at all to the consequences.

“ _Damnitall_!” he yells, dropping her leg.

She splashes back into the water, laughing at her own cleverness. He’s drenched, she notes.  “Serves you right.”

He growls, pulling his soaked waistcoat away from his stomach. “Indeed,” he says, sobered by the deed, but then without warning, he struts up and dashing his upper body down, into the water, picks her up with ease.

“ _Eli!”_  she screeches, wriggling (but with little intent to escape, quite entirely from surprise). “Put me down.”

“On the floor? Think not, rather hard, you see.”

He walks them dripping back into the bedroom, and with a toss, throws her upon the mattress. She bounces, giggling up at him, and while he struggles to undress out of his wetted clothing, she kneels up to help. Together they divest him of his clothing, and as the detective falls, while the thief tugs, he shucks off the last of it to the floor: his pants gathered about his ankles.

Too far down on the bed, they grunt and writhe, while kissing one another, damp hands rummaging, to right themselves. They wrestle their way to the headboard, Belle first, and Gold takes the opportunity to take one breast into his mouth to suckle upon. She smiles, a hand twined in his dirty hair to keep him there, as her heel trails up and down his spine.

He sprinkles kisses about her chest, but it’s not enough—not when they’ve rolled about and she feels him hard at her thigh against her slicked body, “I need—“

“I know,” he grunts, and in one foul-swoop, he parts her lower lips with his cock in hand and pushes himself full into her alleyway. They both call out at the relief, and after a moment’s relief he pulls back only to rejoin. He kisses her, and she in reply sucks on his lower lip in thanks, her hand pressed to the center of his back, feeling the taut muscles of the skinny man.

For some time, he keeps his thrusts slow, but deep—even in their propinquity, and Belle despite her own enjoyment, knees bent about his hips, wonders at it, the ever brilliant man.

Was she boring him?

The thought worries her: that perhaps he wishes to still be carousing with the good doctor, or perhaps even, in the company of another? She moving her hand to his shoulder, tries with her foot to roll them over, surprise him— _thrill_ him.

She whines light, when he holds her steady, “A problem?” he asks, winded, drawing near-almost out her. Her loins clench to draw him back in, but it only serves to keep him at a distance. “Belle?”

“No—I,” she struggles, and finds herself as much at a loss as he, “I thought you might want—“

“I want it like this,” he states blatantly, and regaining a touch of his usual exasperative nature, he draws out and back in, but only with the knob of his instrument. She mewls at the taunting. “Don’t you?”

Belle tosses her head up and back in reply, biting her lip.

He doesn’t give up the ploy, giving her little of himself but that first engorged portion, “Answer me.”

“Yes, I want it.”

“Good,” he tells her, smiling into her neck, before fully sheathing himself once again.

All at once he sets a faster pace for them, and running his hand between their bodies, he plucks lightly at her notch-hill. After a few moments, she succumbs shakily beneath him, and he too, lets himself go not long after.

“Now,” he huffs, “we can roll over.” He turns to his back, separating their baubles, but keeping his arms about her, taking Belle with him to the new posture. They sleep almost immediately.

-

She wakes before him, like always.

Belle looks over at him, sleeping sound atop the sullied bedcovers. She smiles at his heavy breathing, and slowly rolls out of bed. It’s still dark, for the candles burn low. However, no sounds mark the coming day—not yet, at least.

Taking up one of the larger tapers and her bundle of clothing, she creeps tip-toe to the doctor’s late study to redress, which plays host to Gold’s growing web. She looks it over as she lays out her clothing. He’s added the tousle in Croatia over the mines, and the murder in Bologna since Christmas. Of those she was aware, other clippings she recognizes not—if they are Zosowlski’s work she’s not been made privy.

Lowering the light, she sets it on the table, turning to her own person. Her hair falls all around her face, having come loose from their play and rest. She fishes out the last remaining clips before hooking her suspenders about her waist, followed by one stocking, and then the other. Just as she clasps them about her thigh, she feels him enter the room. Even before the trick board creaks halfway to the desk. “Couldn’t sleep?” she asks.

“You left.”

Ah, he never did much like sleeping in a bed alone. She waits for the comment to sting, to bite at her, but it doesn’t. “Your web’s grown,” she doesn’t answer, baring all her garnered  _savoir-faire_  in facing him.

“No thanks to you.” He refers to her little lift on Christmas Eve—or Day, rather. That one bites. “So, you here for another trinket? Another souvenir for your professor?”

“No,” she chuckles, leaning back on the little desk below his web, “in fact, I’m on strict orders to stay as far away from the great detective Eleazar Gold as possible.”

“Is that right?” he asks, dubious of tone, approaching her.

“Mhm,” she nods, and this, flirting with him, she knows how to do at least. “Thinks I might be compromising my work with  _dangerous_  feelings.” She smirks at him, “What a notion.”

“Indeed,” he walks past her, rather turning his attention to his map of Zosowlski’s work.

Belle frowns, bare but for her stockings and garter-belt, “You should drop this.”

“I should, should I? And why, pray,” he states, without looking at her, “would I do that?”

“Because he’s smarter than you.”

Gold chuckles, “Unlikely.” His eyes flit to her briefly and back, “Think I can’t figure him out, eh? Is that it, dearie?”

She laughs, turning to him, “Oh no, you’ll figure it out.” She faces her entire person to the detective and his web, his infinite eye. She crosses her arms over her bare chest and tells him, “I just think that when you do, the knowledge won’t any good. What’s that when the prophecy becomes the downfall?” she asks.

“Tragic hero?” he offers.

“Like Achilles,” she nods, “Oedipus too.” 

“I dispatched with Sutterland easily enough,” he waves his hand, theatrically.

She shakes her head at his hubris: Gold thinks he can outsmart the most wicked man of her acquaintance, and it’s a mistake that’ll end in bloodshed, she knows. “Not so easily,” Belle reminds, “almost died, twice, if I recall.”

“Yes, but I was rather distracted, you see,” he smirks, pacing to stand behind her, her state of undress getting the better of him, who himself, wears only that self-same dressing gown. “And yet, still I bested him,” He whispers in her ear, dragging his fingertips up to sit on her shoulders. “Mind only half on it—the other, more  _enjoyably_  engaged.”

“But you were smarter than Sutterland,” she fights to keep the moan out of her reply, as his lips connect sweetly with her neck. “Much.”

“And what is our oh-so brilliant professor planning, hm?” After a beat, he chuckles into the crook of her neck, “A hint, for my shall we say  _exertions?_ ”

She laughs too, shocked, and the tension of the moment dissipates, the sound itself a surprise. It’s simply the first she’s ever been propositioned in that manner, as one on the receiving end of carnal favors, rather than the giving body. It’s bloody hilarious, the notion.

He smirks at her, when she leans her head back to his shoulder, his arms wrapping around her torso. “I don’t know,” she tells him honestly.

He chuckles with her, pressing a sweet kiss to her cheek, “You expect me to believe that?”

“No really, Eli,” she implores, “you know in restaurants it’s the same: a cook making only a piece of the cake or dish, so as no single chef besides the master knows the entire recipe.”

He nods, thoughtful, “Wise. Very.” Letting her go (and she holds in a disgruntled sigh), he takes up a piece of parchment and jots down a note to himself. After he finishes, tucking it into his web, alongside, ‘ _Chancellor Bismarck dismissed_ ’ he asks her, more serious, “You’re saying you know nothing of his plan.”

“Yes, he sends me on the most random assortment of assignments. Sometimes laundry or other innocuous bits.” Gold narrows his eyes at her, and she adds, “Not  _all_. Some.”

He catches a loose curl, and twines it about his finger (and didn’t someone do that exact movement, just day before?), “And what errand are we on tonight?”

 Her breath catches. He’s asking why she returned—he’s  _always_ asking why she returned. “I told you,” she says taking his hand, “none. I chose to come here.”

He nods, skeptical, but then she’s a liar, who could ever believe one such as her, a thief and loose woman? Better yet, she wonders, who could ever forgive or love her?

Shaking off the dark thought, she lunges to him, ready to forget such things for a time in his embrace, but in her dash, her hand knocks over the candle, wax flying. 

Her detective, as oft as not, saves her once more—he clutches at the candle, but hisses too, for it splashed his hand in the jostle. “Clumsy girl.”

“I’m sorry,” she exclaims, reaching for his hand. After some tugging, he gives way, and with delicate tugs, she peels off the wax, revealing blushing skin, irked at the startling heat.

Suddenly a thought strikes her.

She tilts her head, dropping his hand in favor of the candlestick. Yes, she wonders what that must have been like.

“What?” he asks, noting her silence of thought.

She waits, but then, tilting her chin alluringly, “Would you do that to me?”

“Do what?” he asks, frowning.

“The candle.”

His eyebrows bunch together, and derisively, he asks, “An idea from your  _Demoiselles_?”

He refers to ladies journal she reads on the regular.  She laughs at the thought—a thing like that in a proper ladies’ magazine, how ridiculous. “Hardly,” she snorts, but the way Gold stares, she blushes, suddenly embarrassed over herself. “Just a passing fancy,” she brushes him off, wishing to hurry past the impertinence of such a suggestion as hers. She turns to her clothing, picking up her men’s shirt (which likely started off as his), but suddenly his hand at her should halts her.

Stepping closer, he holds her shoulders, presses flush their persons, kissing the length of her neck, “What—what would you have me do?”

The posed question sends her eyes to flutter. She hardly knows herself, the thought nothing more than voiced whim. “Oh—well,” she gazes into the mirror to see him watching her with intent eyes, “payment in kind, I suppose.” She nods to his hand, the only mild welt growing there, “for what I did to you.”

Despite her shoulder hiding his mouth from view, he smirks—Belle can see that much. “Alright then,” he presses a final kiss to her shoulder, “just this once, I’ll indulge you.”

(It’s a lie, for they always indulge one another. Always have.)

Sliding his hand from her shoulder to her back, he presses gently there, to have her lean forward onto the table, and after Belle applies the suggested pose, he brushes her hair front, giving him the entirety of her back for canvas.

“You’re beautiful,” he says, doting upon her with a kiss to the center, “too beautiful,” he admonishes. He raises the candle high, whilst his other hand reaches round to her navel, to hold her steady. With a lurch, he lets it fall.

She jumps and hisses at the burn. It’s hot. Hotter than she’d expected, but after a moment cools, and only a lingering throbbing remains in the spot.

“Belle, are—“

“I’m fine.” She tosses her head back to him, grinning, “Come on. Be adventurous, Eli.” She begins to wink, when he, frowning, tips his hand again.

“ _Ouch_!” she jumps—but less this time. When she reopens her eyes from the shock and the sting, he’s watching her.

“Adventurous is what you want, eh?” he asks, peering at her in the mirror, and the dark look to him makes her quiver for him. Lowering his hand, but stopping before the tilt over the precipice, he taunts, “I’d hate to disappoint.” He paints her with a splash, larger than the others prior.

Belle cries out. It’s a strange sensation, hot but also not. Rather more  _intensity_  than anything else she might feel.

As he dots her back intermittently, he draws lulling, little circles on her belly. He moves steadily lower, and at length, he takes hold that heftier piece of her. She squeaks at his grip on her romp, his hand having reached beneath her garter strap to take hold of her tush. She shivers, as his cool ring presses up against her sweating skin.

Shifting his hand, he takes a handful of fat between thumb and forefinger, tugging. She squeals at the pinch. He pauses there, deliberating, and then drops again, on them both, hand and arse, a dollop.

They both make a cry at the sticky deposit, and thence, dropping the candle to the desk, Gold runs his hands up her back to bury his face in her hair, “Your fault,” he says inexplicably (but she understands it).

“Eli,” she whispers in return, only his name. “Eli.”

Perhaps the name, perhaps the odd treasure map he’d made of her back—he loses his composure, “Oh, Belle.”

She makes a warm sound, grasping an arm behind her head, to take hold his hair. He answers the tug, by gumming his way down her neck, to the crook where it meets her torso. She smiles at his lips on her, “My Eli.”

He too smiles, and the hand at her stomach slips between her legs. Without preamble, Gold lodges two fingers deep within her. She gasps, near swoons, for earlier activities have left her more than ready to accept him again.

Rather far gone himself (and rail hard for her, she notes, as his member presses between her buttocks), he takes her by the shoulders, and spins her to face him.

They smile at one another only a moment, before they kiss. His hand forages in her fruitful vine, while she alights her backside upon the edge of his desk. Once balanced—the burnt down candle wellout harm’s way—she reaches for the meager tie that closes the gown, and with one tug she unrigs him to her sight.

Grasping him with a leg to pull him between her thighs, Belle plays her thumb over his blushing head. He’s wet there with his first mettled drops. At her touch, he moans into her mouth, lightly, and she can’t help but giggle in reply.

He growls at that, and brushing back her hand, he takes himself to palm, loading the pistol thrice over, and with a hand upon her endowed hip, he thrusts up into her, fast and hard.

He makes no light sport of the prigging—laying her without rest, a steady beat, not unlike a drinking song, sang at night’s end too loud, too happy, to overshadow a parting’s loom. In the frenzy, they pant, cheek to cheek, an ear to each, their hot breaths calling out time.

He’s close, she knows, and thinks it hardly to her own blame as she waggles a hand between their slicked bodies to touch her own velvet. It’s takes longer than she’d like, but at last, with a twist, the graze of a nail, she comes, and Eli too, at her milking of him.

They hold one another, heaving, sullied again. Surely not, she thinks, would he begrudge her the self-pleasures, her eyes closed, cheek to his shoulder. No, not her Eli.

-

It’s only a little past noon when Belle returns to The Grand. Her shirt sticks to her back, bits of wax still remaining. She shivers, a little in delight, at the memory of their dalliance, twice over, her lately labored upon loins clenching, too…

She unlocks the door and enters her room, immediately going to her vanity. Slipping off the gloves, she gets to work on her hat, having used a few quick pins to stay it, the boy’s cap gives way rather quickly. She feels it coming loose, pulling her frayed curls, when a voice behind her speaks, “Good afternoon, Miss French.”

She jumps, screaming a little, but upon finding in the mirror’s reflection, Professor Zosowlski, seated on a little chaise lounge in the background, she relaxes. “Oh, lawd, you frightened me,” she heaves a hand to her breast.

Suddenly, her fears return anew, for he stares at her something fierce. The dissembled woman moves her hands to return to her head, taking off her hat and going to work on the rest of her pins (for he, like many, have seen her in such stages of undress and need not be shocked at seeing it again—truly, for anything else would too, create an alarm at the difference from the norm of their interactions), “What uh—what are you doing here?”

He frowns, “Not pleased that your employer’s come to call?” He stands, making a light pace of the distance between them, “Am I not allowed to check on those upon whom I’ve pledged my benefactions? Or have you already forgotten last night’s headache.”

Oh yes, Belle recalls, her lie of yesternight, “I haven’t forgot. I’m much recovered now.” She gestures to her manner of dress, “Actually went about for tea in Chinatown this morning. Very restorative.”

Her hands shake from the sudden rush to her blood, and with hair awry, unable to find the last few pins, she gives up, turning from the mirror to face him. “I’m all better, as you see. Now if that’s all,” she waves him off, turning to her dressing screen, “I’ve a full schedule today—as you should well know, having put me to most the tasks— _”_

“Wait,” he calls, and Belle halts, a hand to a nearby bureau. “I’ve brought you a gift.” She looks to him, and from behind his person, he pulls forth a beautiful, red rose.

Her mouth lowers in shock, “Oh. Thank you,” she says, truly surprised. She walks over to take up the precious jewel. The old impulse strikes her immediately. She closes her eyes and breathes deep the fresh scent of springtime. “It’s lovely.”

“Then you like it?”

Belle smiles at him fully. It’s the first she’s ever truly smiled at him, Professor Zosowlski. “I do.”

She practically skips over to one of her trunks and pulls forth a proper vase. She moves back to her vanity and taking up the pitcher of water from the basin, she pours a small measure for the flower. “They don’t keep roses at the university gardens, do they?”

She looks to see him shake his head. “No, they do not.”

She nods, “I can see why. They’re testy things.” She slips the blossom into the vase, and unable to resist, lowers her nose to it again. “Did you go to the rosarium at Abney Park for it?”

Again he shakes his head, but as she turns to enquire as to the item’s origin, a familiar note strikes her. “Wait, I know this one. It’s a  _Jacqueminot_ ’.” Frowning, Belle’s mind sets to work, “You don’t see them too much. It’s a perpetual, but a lot of care, daily, really, waterings and enriching the ground, quite the price to pay for just a handful of blooms. Actually, I all but tended to the Gaston family rose gardens— _Oh god_ —“ Belle’s heart clenches, as she grasps the vanity for purchase. “ _Where,_ ” she points a shaking finger to the flower, _“_ did you get that?”

She forces her head to turn to him; he grins. ““You know where.”

She struggles, but asks, “You got it from—from my Godfrey?” 

He smirks, “Rather high-handed to lay claim a man of which you divested yourself long ago.”

She’s undeterred at the quip. She reaches a pacifying hand out to him, “Please, Godfrey, he—please, he’s not in this. He didn’t  _do_  anything—“

“’Course not.”

She breathes one breath and then two of relief.

“Dead men do nothing a’tall,” he states flippant.

“ _No!_ ” Isabelle French wails, losing control of her appendages, and a force that surely belongs not to her body, throws her down upon the desk. Flailing limbs fling loose articles, paints and rouges, compacts, the vase and flower too, to the ground. “Godfrey, oh, Godfrey,” she cries.

Her legs give out without consent, but she does not fall to the ground to wallow. Instead, arms encircle her person.

“You think me one of your cullied lays to be lied to?” he hisses in her ear, “I told you to stay away from your detective, but you didn’t listen.” He runs a hand over her ruined hair, while sobs wrack her body. “No, no, you went to be docked by our Mr. Gold.” He slips his hand about her neck, pushing her to face their savage visages in the mirror, “while your cuckold castoff paid the port fee.”

Putting his nose close to her head (as she the rose not five minutes previous) he takes two sniffs of her hair. A look of disgust covers his face, “You smell like him.” He pushes her from his person, loosely into the vanity, “Bathe, and have yourself ready to leave in no more than one hour.”

He rights his suit jacket, as he explains, “You’re to accompany me on a jaunt to Paris for business. I’ll explain our aims further in the coach to the train station.” Once again the picture of respectability, he bends at the waist to retrieve the thrown vase and rose, which he conjoins and returns to its rightful place on the table.

“You made a grave error in disobeying my orders, Miss French,” walking to the door he tells her, “I don’t believe you’re going to make that mistake again.” He slams (and locks) the door, leaving her alone.

Belle French sinks to the floor, and sobbing for a dead man she never loved.

-

Inexplicably, an hour later finds the adventuress decked in black, without luggage of any kind, only a singular rose in hand, and with the exception of a swollen face, she looks beautiful as ever. She wonders at herself; she’s no recollection of bathing, nor of dressing and walking to the hotel lobby.

But here she is.

“Your bags?” he asks, once she joins him in the coach.

She shakes her head in reply. The man raises his eyebrows, but says nothing. Besides, Belle imagines Paris has clothiers enough to outfit her with black wool, crepe and lace for the allotted widow’s year and a day mourning period.

Even if the mourning period outstrips the short marriage span.

-

“Did you read this?” the doctor asks.

He calls upon Gold late that afternoon on Sunday. They spend most weekends in much the same vein as ever they did. He continues his own efforts at cleaning his pistol, “Read what?”

“This,” Victor points to a small swatch in yesterday’s  _Evening Standard_. “Godfrey Gaston.”

The detective bristles at the name, “What about him?”

“He’s dead.”

His hands freeze, snapping his head up to Whale, “What?”

“Dead,” he repeats. Victor turns down to abbreviate the obituary, “Tuberculosis, a rare form too. Happens without warning, you see—thought the strain something of an urban legend myself, but, apparently not.” He puts a finger to his mouth, eyebrows scrunched in deep thought. “Ghastly way to go, in any case.”

Gold forces himself to return to the pistol in his hands, to hide his shock (and concern), “Why’s that?”

“You drown in it. The blood, internally, fills the lungs to capacity.” Victor shakes his head, “Just shoot a bloody V.R. into my skull and be done with it,” he says, gesturing to the older man’s bullet artwork adorning the wall in mock gravitas.

 

“One shot would likely do the trick, old boy,” Gold mumbles.

“Good lord,” he continues, not listening, “I just can’t believe it. Not that I knew the fellow well. Anita’s on friendly terms with the Gaston mother, in any case. We’d met, in passing, that is.”

“A point to this, Victor?” Gold deadpans. 

“He was—uh, he was—“

“Hers, yes,” the detective offers, by way of explanation.

“Were they on,” he pauses looking for proper verbiage, “good terms?”

Gold scoffs, “Like I’d know—better than ours at any rate.”

“Will you go?” When the other man stares up in question, the doctor clarifies, “To the funeral?”

“Hardly. I’ve no interest in a woman’s crocodile tears, Whale,” he snaps.

-

Four days later, he finds himself in attendance to the service, but she’s not there, and thusly, counts the jaunt a loss (as well as a confirmation). He plans to make his escape at earliest contrivance, but after the pallbearers pass, the solemn hush leaving the crowd along with the casket, he overhears a nearby pair discussing the recent tragedy.

“… Only just gone to the schools for dinner. Father’s one of the fellows—“

Gold narrows his eyes, and turning sharp to the pair asks, “Schools, what schools?”

The younger men shoot him a look to the oddity of the question and his intrusion upon their private conversation, but still the first speaker replies, “Why the university, of course.”

“Yes, yes, which,” he hurries.

“Leeds,” the young man adds, “Godfrey hadn’t felt poorly in the least, prior to—“

He cuts off his tale, when he turns from his companion to find Gold already gone.

 

-

Gold does not send flowers, rather, he sends word to her at The Grand that he’s procured a copy of the Cleland brother’s seditious novel,  _Fanny Hill_ , (which upon reading truly stands a very, dirty little text; she’ll love it), of which she’d long been upon the hunt thereof, the banned book, being only available through underground avenues.

(It had been difficult and taken some considerable means, but she need not know that trifling detail.)

However, he sends his condolence missive only to have it returned, his letter and black-wrapped parcel unopened, along with a note from the concierge stating Miss French lately off to France.

Upon reception of the missive, Gold tacks Godfrey’s obituary to his web, not far from center, after which he sits down and neglects said web for just a few hours, instead rereading the Cleland book. 


End file.
